This is long overdue. Thank you for waiting. The classroom you extend requires the utmost of presence.
The reading, writing, and interpretation listed on the syllabus are not optional.
There is no graduation, just continuation.
See then why it took me so long to take my seat.
Oh that I had learned your lessons earlier
and avoided the ice castle constructs blocking me from genuine freedom.
I did not know your liberty because I was too afraid to surrender.
Forgive me.
You promised to set us apart, to help us stand up, to redeem our unbelief.
But I did not hear, too consumed with fix-it faucets slowly leaking the lies
of cheap repair, too consumed with the mythical protection of hard-heartedness.
Worn thin, out of ideas, I could no longer deny your power or invitation.
There came a moment when “do or die” went from slogan to maxim,
from sure I guess to unequivocal yes. I broke. You seduced. I came.You delivered.
I should have known.
When I was wrecked with nothing left you unraveled
with my slightest consent and made new the deadliest spot within.
I was surprised. Some days I forget only to return again on my knees.
You are generous.
I should have known tears would be the solution,
wordless exhaustion and admittance of despair my redemptive hope.
I have not received a grade, rather a summons
to participate in the most revolutionary of movements,
one that re-members me over and over again
in the faces of suffering, in the dust surrounding bodies torn apart
from rape, war, and neglect.
Sustained in this world without end.
Amen.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Monday, October 26, 2009
Monja Blanca by Clive James
Ejoye's note: I read this in the New Yorker a while back. The last two stanzas read like apophatic theology and I have given "bold" to my favorite lines. Herald the dope. Peace and power my people.
The wild White Nun, rarest and loveliest
Of all her kind, takes form in the green shade
Deep in the forest. Streams of filtered light
Are tapped, distilled, and lavishly expressed
As petals. Her sweet hunger is displayed
By the labellum, set for bees in flight
To land on. In her well, the viscin gleams:
Mesmeric nectar, sticky stuff of dreams.
This orchid’s sexual commerce is confined
To flowers of her own class, and nothing less.
And yet for humans she sends so sublime
A sensual signal that it melts the mind.
The hunters brave a poisoned wilderness
To capture just a few blooms at a time,
And even they, least sensitive of men,
Will stand to look, and sigh, and look again,
Dying of love for what does not love them.
Transported to the world, her wiles inspire
The same frustration in rich connoisseurs
Who pay the price for nourishing the stem
To keep the bloom fresh, as if their desire
To live forever lived again through hers:
But in a day she fades, though every fold
Be duplicated in fine shades of gold.
Only where she was born, and only for
One creature, will she give up everything
Simply because she is adored; and he
Must sacrifice himself. The Minotaur,
Ugly, exhausted, has no gifts to bring
Except his grief. She opens utterly
To show how she can match his tears of pain.
He drinks her in, and she him, like the rain.
He sees her, then, at her most beautiful,
And he would say so, could she give him speech:
But he must end his life there, near his prize,
Having been chosen, half man and half bull,
To find the heaven that we never reach
Though seeking it forever. Nothing buys
Or keeps a revelation that was meant
For eyes not ours and once seen is soon spent:
For all our sakes she should be left alone,
Guarded by legends of how men went mad
Merely from tasting her, of monsters who
Died from her kiss. May this forbidden zone
Be drawn for all time. If she ever had
A hope to live, it lies in what we do
To curb the longing she arouses. Let
Her be. We are not ready for her yet,
Because we have a mind to make her ours,
And she belongs to nobody’s idea
Of the sublime but hers. But that we know,
Or would, if it were not among her powers
Always across the miles to bring us near
To where she thrives on shadows. By her glow
We measure darkness; by her splendor, all
That is to come, or gone beyond recall.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Love: Something Else & Mechanism
Forgive the streamy-ness of consciousness here.
Everyone says the word
but it becomes more and more apparent
that we're talking about something else
when we utter it in phrases mocked
by its over-usage elsewhere.
Talk about needed translators. This is serious.
You can bet at least 30 million people let it
go from their lips this second. At least.
Right now
someone is confessing it instead of joy
another it instead of silence
another it instead of lust
and sadly another it instead of sheer wonder.
I had a professor once who said
the problem with the English language,
and hence the whole population of persons who
organize their lives with the English language,
is that we only have one word for it,
therefore we cannot distinguish
appreciation from gut-wrenching connection,
nor biological impulse from that which is breath-taking to behold.
I’m taking this further.
When talking about its presence in relational configurations,
some are describing ownership contracts,
others conflating home, culture and comfort with power and privilege,
still others speaking to an arbitrarily constructed equation based
on the necessity of gendered halfs.
For instance, Anna and I went to this poetry workshop facilitated by
Christina about 3 years ago where we did language games of word association in order to promote the splaying forth of poetry. When Christina called out “love” I wrote down the name of my mate of the time. Anna wrote “tomatoes.”
Let me tell you: Anna’s answer stood alone
in honesty/meaning/attachment-clarity and creativity,
but I thought she was so very silly at the time.
Talk about a language problem. This is serious.
Talk about stunted relational maturity. This is so fucking serious.
So here are my people
limited in speaking what's given
limited in our capacities to build below and beyond this narrow concept
which actually might be, in its multiplicitous variations,
the most vital concept on Earth, at least near that of G-d,
while also attempting to out-source democracy. Mercy.
And so I think we're talking about something else
when we talk about love of country. Is it duty? I suspect that
after listening to the stories of soldiers and impulses
of aspiring politicians.
What is more, when we talk about loving neighbor, we are talking
specifically about responsibility. I've learned that after paying
attention to the texts that get quoted when people are asking
for charity or compassionate attention. We don't love someone
who is hungry on the street, but we love something enough
to practice responsibility in the moment we bend down to give
the leftovers in our hands. I think we love the utopian promise born
of responsibility, or the distraction acts of charity provide in
the face of debilitating suffering, or perhaps we love the people who tricked us into believing that caring for an innocent stranger
actually matters. How about those conversations about loving to witness the flourishing of all people? Perhaps you mean justice.
At least, I mean justice when I'm talking about love,
at least half the time. The other half I'm busy conflating it
with this incredible mystery I cannot describe but
keep aiming for with my poetry, theology, dancing and sex life.
Perhaps we all keep aiming for this incredible mystery
with our worn out, shallow language and
in spite of our knowledge that the aim and language will never
deliver us or set us free or give us security
there's some mechanism that won't allow us to quit trying.
What is that mechanism?
There's this YouTube Derrida video, yes I posted
it here before, that I remember now. The person behind
the camera asks the philosopher to speak on "love."
He says,"I have nothing to say about love in general,"
demanding that she pose a question.
That is the mechanism.
Everyone says the word
but it becomes more and more apparent
that we're talking about something else
when we utter it in phrases mocked
by its over-usage elsewhere.
Talk about needed translators. This is serious.
You can bet at least 30 million people let it
go from their lips this second. At least.
Right now
someone is confessing it instead of joy
another it instead of silence
another it instead of lust
and sadly another it instead of sheer wonder.
I had a professor once who said
the problem with the English language,
and hence the whole population of persons who
organize their lives with the English language,
is that we only have one word for it,
therefore we cannot distinguish
appreciation from gut-wrenching connection,
nor biological impulse from that which is breath-taking to behold.
I’m taking this further.
When talking about its presence in relational configurations,
some are describing ownership contracts,
others conflating home, culture and comfort with power and privilege,
still others speaking to an arbitrarily constructed equation based
on the necessity of gendered halfs.
For instance, Anna and I went to this poetry workshop facilitated by
Christina about 3 years ago where we did language games of word association in order to promote the splaying forth of poetry. When Christina called out “love” I wrote down the name of my mate of the time. Anna wrote “tomatoes.”
Let me tell you: Anna’s answer stood alone
in honesty/meaning/attachment-clarity and creativity,
but I thought she was so very silly at the time.
Talk about a language problem. This is serious.
Talk about stunted relational maturity. This is so fucking serious.
So here are my people
limited in speaking what's given
limited in our capacities to build below and beyond this narrow concept
which actually might be, in its multiplicitous variations,
the most vital concept on Earth, at least near that of G-d,
while also attempting to out-source democracy. Mercy.
And so I think we're talking about something else
when we talk about love of country. Is it duty? I suspect that
after listening to the stories of soldiers and impulses
of aspiring politicians.
What is more, when we talk about loving neighbor, we are talking
specifically about responsibility. I've learned that after paying
attention to the texts that get quoted when people are asking
for charity or compassionate attention. We don't love someone
who is hungry on the street, but we love something enough
to practice responsibility in the moment we bend down to give
the leftovers in our hands. I think we love the utopian promise born
of responsibility, or the distraction acts of charity provide in
the face of debilitating suffering, or perhaps we love the people who tricked us into believing that caring for an innocent stranger
actually matters. How about those conversations about loving to witness the flourishing of all people? Perhaps you mean justice.
At least, I mean justice when I'm talking about love,
at least half the time. The other half I'm busy conflating it
with this incredible mystery I cannot describe but
keep aiming for with my poetry, theology, dancing and sex life.
Perhaps we all keep aiming for this incredible mystery
with our worn out, shallow language and
in spite of our knowledge that the aim and language will never
deliver us or set us free or give us security
there's some mechanism that won't allow us to quit trying.
What is that mechanism?
There's this YouTube Derrida video, yes I posted
it here before, that I remember now. The person behind
the camera asks the philosopher to speak on "love."
He says,"I have nothing to say about love in general,"
demanding that she pose a question.
That is the mechanism.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
And the Award for Most Spacious Goes to...
I would like to write a poem
entitled "The Space in James."
When my readers were done
with the last line they'd know
I was describing G-d.
entitled "The Space in James."
When my readers were done
with the last line they'd know
I was describing G-d.
New Link to (and for) the Left
To all of you interested in peace and pastoral care, check it check it.
http://globalministries.org/mee/from-war-to-peace/the-war-and-pastoral-care.html#
Power to the peaceful,
Ejoye
http://globalministries.org/mee/from-war-to-peace/the-war-and-pastoral-care.html#
Power to the peaceful,
Ejoye
Saturday, October 17, 2009
From My Morning Devotional Time
From Barbra Brown Taylor's chapter "The Practice of Encountering Others" in An Altar in the World
"What we have most in common is not religion but humanity. I learned this from my religion, which also teaches me that encountering another human being is as close to God as I may ever get--in the eye-to-eye thing, the person-to-person thing--which is where God's Beloved has promised to show up. Paradoxically, the point is not to see him.
The point is to see the person standing right in front of me, who has no substitute , who can never be replaced, whose heart holds things for which there is no language, whose life is an unsolved mystery. The moment I turn that person into a character in my own story, the encounter is over. I have stopped being a human being and have become a fiction writer instead."
"What we have most in common is not religion but humanity. I learned this from my religion, which also teaches me that encountering another human being is as close to God as I may ever get--in the eye-to-eye thing, the person-to-person thing--which is where God's Beloved has promised to show up. Paradoxically, the point is not to see him.
The point is to see the person standing right in front of me, who has no substitute , who can never be replaced, whose heart holds things for which there is no language, whose life is an unsolved mystery. The moment I turn that person into a character in my own story, the encounter is over. I have stopped being a human being and have become a fiction writer instead."
Friday, October 16, 2009
Unemployment/Sharing/You
Today I received a phone call from a search committee informing me that my candidacy with them was through, that they'd chosen someone else and that they wished me the best. I want to reflect upon what it's like to work in a field where many people use the terminology of "call" in the discourse on jobs, employment and the future. I also want to reflect upon what it's like to hear "no thanks" when you've offered to surrender (most) of your life to serving a community. Further, I'd like to reflect on the general job market and what it means that a privileged white person with tons of education (and credentials) cannot find work right now. However, I'll leave those blogs for another day...
G-d I have so much to say right now and no one/everyone to hear me.
(Read: this is the blog of an unemployed minister)
This blogging thing can change in its author's imagination daily. Sometimes an outlet for poetry. Sometimes an experiment in reaching out. Other days I come here to distract myself. It's true. It can go from journal to community organizing portal within a matter of hours. We share it, don't we? But not in the way we share coffee in hand-crafted mugs. Not in the way we share live music, food, sex or worship.
I've been out of work since August. Perhaps the thing I miss most about working is sharing. And so I keep coming here and going to Facebook trying to share. I want to share resources, thoughts, reactions, questions. Essentially this discipline of sharing is similar to the practice of ministry. But here there's no bread and wine, no hand-holding in prayer, no facial gestures that cue my religious heart instantaneously. I miss the interdiction, the interpenetrating realities of intimacy, the internalizing of Word, the feedback loops between bodies (not screens). When I come to this blog or hit up facebook, I'm looking for You. But I don't find You here--at least not the full You. And so that's why I'm not giving up on the field of ministry though I've got every reason in the world to walk away. I find the Source of my life in the feedback loops between bodies and institutions, the Source I'm hoping to serve and rely on until I take my last breath. I cannot find, serve, nor rely upon this Source from behind this computer. It provides me distance, some security and valuable open spaces but the lack of You (here, now) forces me back to the application process, back to the employment listings, back to the search and call madness that often leaves me feeling rejected and weary. I am back to these things, because dear You, I simply cannot live without You (here, now).
Do you understand?
G-d I have so much to say right now and no one/everyone to hear me.
(Read: this is the blog of an unemployed minister)
This blogging thing can change in its author's imagination daily. Sometimes an outlet for poetry. Sometimes an experiment in reaching out. Other days I come here to distract myself. It's true. It can go from journal to community organizing portal within a matter of hours. We share it, don't we? But not in the way we share coffee in hand-crafted mugs. Not in the way we share live music, food, sex or worship.
I've been out of work since August. Perhaps the thing I miss most about working is sharing. And so I keep coming here and going to Facebook trying to share. I want to share resources, thoughts, reactions, questions. Essentially this discipline of sharing is similar to the practice of ministry. But here there's no bread and wine, no hand-holding in prayer, no facial gestures that cue my religious heart instantaneously. I miss the interdiction, the interpenetrating realities of intimacy, the internalizing of Word, the feedback loops between bodies (not screens). When I come to this blog or hit up facebook, I'm looking for You. But I don't find You here--at least not the full You. And so that's why I'm not giving up on the field of ministry though I've got every reason in the world to walk away. I find the Source of my life in the feedback loops between bodies and institutions, the Source I'm hoping to serve and rely on until I take my last breath. I cannot find, serve, nor rely upon this Source from behind this computer. It provides me distance, some security and valuable open spaces but the lack of You (here, now) forces me back to the application process, back to the employment listings, back to the search and call madness that often leaves me feeling rejected and weary. I am back to these things, because dear You, I simply cannot live without You (here, now).
Do you understand?
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Smoke & Ashes instead of Dust & Ashes (because Tracy is hotter than Job)
I don't know why some music resonates deeply at various "turning points" in life, but this one sure is looping through my head and (red hot) heart right now.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Returning Home & Lasting Friendship
There are many things about "returning home" that can erk, disturb, make uncomfortable, etc. Running into people who remember you and can only relate to you as a teenager ranks high on my list of "situations I'd rather avoid." There's also the unfortunate occasion when you find yourself unconsciously regressing into that teenage space because of external stimuli: your parent's house, passing by the street where your first crush lived, etc. Some of these "returning home" experiences foster a sense of gratitude for the development and maturity achieved between "then" and now. And some of them just cause quick-think-about-something-else reactions. But for all the headache of heading home, there's one thing that stands alone as a corrective of regret and producer of thankfulness--a thing that makes you look in the present upon the past with fondness and appreciation. I just got back from having brunch with my friend ABC. We've known each other since Mrs. Brockway's 7th grade history class at El Roble. After sharing stories about what's been up for the last year (or so), we settled into our most familiar and sacred place--laughter. I cannot articulate in words how valuable her friendship is to/for me, how much my reverence for relationships that provoke laughter has grown as I've aged, and what it means to be part of something that lasts and lasts and lasts. Money can't buy everything of value my people. And only love sustains the things of true worth. I hope the seeds of relationship I plant today will become even half as fertile as the ones I planted with Adian back in 1993. (Can you tell from the picture how absolutely ridiculous we were, and therefore why we always had so many things to laugh about??)
That's my Word for today. Thanks be to G-d...Ejoye
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Change & The Cancer Journals
Okay, so I know I'm posting a ton of mommy stuff, but for everything there's a season, right? Having said that: let it be known that while it's the season of momma domestically, it's the season of alchemy personally.
So many changes, I don't even know where to begin.
The loss of my 2 year love affair, which isn't really lost but still losing itself in an exciting and terrifying way? The loss of my chaplaincy position at the VA, which came as an expected continuation of a pattern already begun but turned into a brick wall before I could protest publicly? The loss of my mobility due to this back injury, which has forced me into a slower pace than I'd ever willingly choose (the slowness giving gifts I could never anticipate)? Yes, I could start there. Or I could start with the poets I've been reading: C.K. Williams, Adriene Rich (again), and Yusef Komanyaaka. Or I could start with the musicians currently on rotate: "New Beginnings" by Tracy Chapman, MGMT, and Bon Iver's "For Emma, forever ago" (thanks to Courtney Brooke--who got married, wow).
But what I really want to say is this: I purchased Audre Lorde's "Cancer Journals" after posting about it the other day. I'm halfway through her writing and cannot believe the depth of my connection to and yearning for this text. Jesus. Much like my reaction to finding Molly Bolt, I feel outraged that it's taken me 28 years to find Lorde wrestling with body pain and the maxims of healing. What if my reading of the "Cancer Journals" got as much social/political/relational reward and reinforcement as my reading of the New Testament? or To Kill a Mockingbird? Whatever, I hate to harp on the negative when my engagement with a resource is producing such novelty, beauty, and eroticism. But I just had to harp for a second. Please read this text if you haven't. The reflections on prosthesis and power brought me right back to Betcher's work in "Spirit and the Politics of Disablement" (another must read). We have got to stop the war on people's natural bodies under the invisible forces of racist/sexist/ablist/heterosexist capitalism. We have got to encourage the flourishing of the multiple, and let me just say, there's nothing more powerful than a black-dyke-breast-cancer-surviving-poet talking about her experience with a mastectomy to confirm this fact. Survival is beautiful. Testimony is beautiful. I give glory to my Creator for the witness of Audre Lorde and how it's pushing me today, into the place of appreciation for all that's lost, saved, and moved by love.
So many changes, I don't even know where to begin.
The loss of my 2 year love affair, which isn't really lost but still losing itself in an exciting and terrifying way? The loss of my chaplaincy position at the VA, which came as an expected continuation of a pattern already begun but turned into a brick wall before I could protest publicly? The loss of my mobility due to this back injury, which has forced me into a slower pace than I'd ever willingly choose (the slowness giving gifts I could never anticipate)? Yes, I could start there. Or I could start with the poets I've been reading: C.K. Williams, Adriene Rich (again), and Yusef Komanyaaka. Or I could start with the musicians currently on rotate: "New Beginnings" by Tracy Chapman, MGMT, and Bon Iver's "For Emma, forever ago" (thanks to Courtney Brooke--who got married, wow).
But what I really want to say is this: I purchased Audre Lorde's "Cancer Journals" after posting about it the other day. I'm halfway through her writing and cannot believe the depth of my connection to and yearning for this text. Jesus. Much like my reaction to finding Molly Bolt, I feel outraged that it's taken me 28 years to find Lorde wrestling with body pain and the maxims of healing. What if my reading of the "Cancer Journals" got as much social/political/relational reward and reinforcement as my reading of the New Testament? or To Kill a Mockingbird? Whatever, I hate to harp on the negative when my engagement with a resource is producing such novelty, beauty, and eroticism. But I just had to harp for a second. Please read this text if you haven't. The reflections on prosthesis and power brought me right back to Betcher's work in "Spirit and the Politics of Disablement" (another must read). We have got to stop the war on people's natural bodies under the invisible forces of racist/sexist/ablist/heterosexist capitalism. We have got to encourage the flourishing of the multiple, and let me just say, there's nothing more powerful than a black-dyke-breast-cancer-surviving-poet talking about her experience with a mastectomy to confirm this fact. Survival is beautiful. Testimony is beautiful. I give glory to my Creator for the witness of Audre Lorde and how it's pushing me today, into the place of appreciation for all that's lost, saved, and moved by love.
Mom's Birthday Blessing
For Your Birthday
By John O'Donohue (taken from "To Bless the Space Between Us")
Blessed be the mind that dreamed the day
the blueprint of your life
would begin to glow on earth,
illuminating all the faces and voices
that would arrive to invite
your soul to growth.
Praised be your father and mother,
who loved you before you were,
and trusted to call you here
with no idea who you would be.
Blessed be those who have loved you
into becoming who you were meant to be,
blessed be those who have crossed your life
with dark gifts of hurt and loss
that have helped to school your mind
in the art of disappointment.
When desolation surrounded you,
blessed be those who looked for you
and found you, their kind hands
urgent to open a blue window
in the gray wall formed around you.
Blessed be the gifts you never notice,
your health, eyes to behold the world,
thoughts to countenance the unknown,
memory to harvest vanished days,
your heart to feel the world's waves,
your breath to breathe the nourishment
of distance made intimate by earth.
On this echoing-day of your birth,
may you open the gift of solitude
in order to receive your soul;
enter the generosity of silence
to hear your hidden heart;
know the serenity of stillness
to be enfolded anew
by the miracle of your being.
***This is the birthday blessing I offered at my mom's 60th Birthday celebration last night.
By John O'Donohue (taken from "To Bless the Space Between Us")
Blessed be the mind that dreamed the day
the blueprint of your life
would begin to glow on earth,
illuminating all the faces and voices
that would arrive to invite
your soul to growth.
Praised be your father and mother,
who loved you before you were,
and trusted to call you here
with no idea who you would be.
Blessed be those who have loved you
into becoming who you were meant to be,
blessed be those who have crossed your life
with dark gifts of hurt and loss
that have helped to school your mind
in the art of disappointment.
When desolation surrounded you,
blessed be those who looked for you
and found you, their kind hands
urgent to open a blue window
in the gray wall formed around you.
Blessed be the gifts you never notice,
your health, eyes to behold the world,
thoughts to countenance the unknown,
memory to harvest vanished days,
your heart to feel the world's waves,
your breath to breathe the nourishment
of distance made intimate by earth.
On this echoing-day of your birth,
may you open the gift of solitude
in order to receive your soul;
enter the generosity of silence
to hear your hidden heart;
know the serenity of stillness
to be enfolded anew
by the miracle of your being.
***This is the birthday blessing I offered at my mom's 60th Birthday celebration last night.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Happy Birthday Mom Tuesday Poem
"Making a decision to have a child–it's momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body."
3 : 6 (excerpt)
Alta
one hesitates to bring a child into this world without fixing
it up a little. paint a special room. stop sexism. learn how
to love. vow to do it better than it was done when you were
a baby. vow to make, if necessary, new mistakes. vow to be
awake for the birth. to believe in joy(e) even in the midst of
unbearable pain
3 : 6 (excerpt)
Alta
one hesitates to bring a child into this world without fixing
it up a little. paint a special room. stop sexism. learn how
to love. vow to do it better than it was done when you were
a baby. vow to make, if necessary, new mistakes. vow to be
awake for the birth. to believe in joy(e) even in the midst of
unbearable pain
Monday, October 5, 2009
Pain & Creativity
Anticipating a constructed myth of apocalyptic content to emerge from this event, this event somehow external and internal simultaneously,
i hear the words of Maria "invite it in; have a relationship with it."
i hear the words of Barbra Brown Taylor "if you're willing to stay awake, this too will become an altar"
i remember that Audre Lorde wrote "Cancer Journals" when she got sick and though I've never read them, I trust her because of everything else she's written, and I trust that someone of her brilliance knew exactly what she was doing when taking up the creative task in response to the potential silencing of misery and physical pain.
i remember listening to David Sturdevant talking about nationalism, as a veteran of the Vietnam era, talking about the pain of citizenship in these times, talking about how his music saved him then and it saves him now, before playing "America the Beautiful" on his harmonica and breaking my politically pouty heart out of its dangerously protective shell.
i recall their words, their teachings, their works of suffering transformed, and I come here, to this place, this space, to write...
because today
i could only walk around my block twice
and envisioned myself looking like an old woman
trapped inside this 28 year old body
that struggles to put one foot in front of the other
when i used to kickbox and dance in nightclubs
for hours on end. i used to envision myself
a fierce warrior, an ecstatic worshipper in those places
and today an apocalyptic narrative began forming
where I envisioned myself walking slowly and painfully for the rest of my life,
stuck in this pain-killer enduced ghost-likeness forever, unable to get past
the numbing sensation that reaches into my hips and
only breaks when shooting pains erupt in my ankles, unable to get past
the numbing sensation that pervades unexpected things like
emotions, sex drive and appetite.
so i come to confess my fear
to call upon the giants of art and recovery
and inspired by their witness of power, i come
to label my injury and its 6 month subsequent reign as a producer of both:
pain and poetry,
loss and creativity
death and fertility.
i come to reclaim the parts of this event which remain
possible and productive,
allowing pain the attention its due and healing the right she deserves.
(Hey Peeps: All week long I'm celebrating my mom who is turning 60! Therefore, all poems this week will be about mothering, daughtering, love of family, the feminine and aging with grace. Here's to the womyn who gave me life and who lives so courageously. Here's hope for "new freedoms born of detachment." Here's poetry for momma. Love and respect, Ejoye)
"Gestalt at Sixty" by May Sarton
I am not ready to die,
But I am learning to trust death
As I have trusted life.
I am moving
Toward a new freedom
Born of detachment,
And a sweeter grace--
Learning to let go.
I am not ready to die,
But as I approach sixty
I turn my face toward the sea.
I shall go where tides replace time,
Where my world will open to a far horizon
Over the floating, never-still flux and change.
I shall go with the changes,
I shall look far out over golden grasses
And blue waters....
"Gestalt at Sixty" by May Sarton
I am not ready to die,
But I am learning to trust death
As I have trusted life.
I am moving
Toward a new freedom
Born of detachment,
And a sweeter grace--
Learning to let go.
I am not ready to die,
But as I approach sixty
I turn my face toward the sea.
I shall go where tides replace time,
Where my world will open to a far horizon
Over the floating, never-still flux and change.
I shall go with the changes,
I shall look far out over golden grasses
And blue waters....
Saturday, October 3, 2009
Titles by Leonard Cohen
I had the title Poet
and maybe I was one
for a while
Also the title Singer
was kindly accorded me
even though
I could barely carry a tune
For many years
I was known as a Monk
I shaved my head and wore robes
and got up very early
I hated everyone
but I acted generously
and no one found me out
My reputation
as a Ladies' Man was a joke
It caused me to laugh bitterly
through the ten thousand nights
I spent alone
From a third-storey window
above the Parc du Portugal
I've watched the snow
come down all day
As usual
there's no one here
There never is
Mercifully
the inner conversation
is cancelled
by the white noise of winter
"I am neither the mind,
The intellect,
nor the silent voice within..."
is also cancelled
and now Gentle Reader
in what name
in whose name
do you come
to idle with me
in these luxurious
and dwindling realms of Aimless Privacy?
Ejoye's commentary: I don't know why, but I've been obsessed with this poem for at least 6 months. I've probably read it over 100 times. I keep coming back to it like I used to go back to scripture thinking I hadn't quite "gotten it yet" (as if we ever "get" scripture...or poetry...or ourselves...or each other). The last 7 lines never cease to amaze or implicate.
I LOVE poetry. This is worship and gift.
and maybe I was one
for a while
Also the title Singer
was kindly accorded me
even though
I could barely carry a tune
For many years
I was known as a Monk
I shaved my head and wore robes
and got up very early
I hated everyone
but I acted generously
and no one found me out
My reputation
as a Ladies' Man was a joke
It caused me to laugh bitterly
through the ten thousand nights
I spent alone
From a third-storey window
above the Parc du Portugal
I've watched the snow
come down all day
As usual
there's no one here
There never is
Mercifully
the inner conversation
is cancelled
by the white noise of winter
"I am neither the mind,
The intellect,
nor the silent voice within..."
is also cancelled
and now Gentle Reader
in what name
in whose name
do you come
to idle with me
in these luxurious
and dwindling realms of Aimless Privacy?
Ejoye's commentary: I don't know why, but I've been obsessed with this poem for at least 6 months. I've probably read it over 100 times. I keep coming back to it like I used to go back to scripture thinking I hadn't quite "gotten it yet" (as if we ever "get" scripture...or poetry...or ourselves...or each other). The last 7 lines never cease to amaze or implicate.
I LOVE poetry. This is worship and gift.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
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